Damaged

Album Review

Think mainstream rock circa the early 21st century, and such easy to digest bands as Nickelback and 3 Doors Down immediately come to mind. Well, there's another band you can add to the heap — Los Angeles' Course of Nature, who issued their sophomore release in 2007, Damaged. So with that, you can probably guess what the key ingredients are here — big singalong choruses, music that incorporates just enough hard rock toughness without going into metal territory, etc. Tracks such as "Anger Cage" and "Time Is Slipping Away" show the group's rock side, while "Memory of You" and "Gone" show their softer side. All the pieces are in place for crossover success, but like a lot of mainstream rock acts of the aforementioned era, it's all same-sounding after a while, and there's not much to differentiate Course of Nature with the host of other similarly styled bands out there, mining the same sonic territory.